Working with the NEC’s catering arm Amadeus, the scheme will offer users of the Eunomia branded cups 25p off any hot beverages.

The Zero Waste Cups cost £1 which was refunded after being brought out, with some visitors opting to keep hold of their cups after the show had finished.

There were around 20,000 cups made for the event, supplied by Greentech start-up Bockatech.

Speaking to RWW, Charlotte Perkins, Eunomia’s social media co-ordinator, said: “We started planning for this in January and it was quite a challenge to get all the retailers to use the cups and finding a cost-effective cup.

“This is definitely a data gathering exercise so we need to wait until we have our results but we are interested in going this again for events which use a lot of single-use coffee cups. We’ve had a lot of interest and it gets people excited about DRS.”

Eunomia has carried out a body of research into the different features and impacts of DRSs, mainly in Europe and North America.